What Should Freedom Lovers Do?

What Should Freedom Lovers Do? por Llewellyn H. Rockwell Jr.:

How can one combine professional life with the advancement of liberty? ..

If often happens that an ideological movement will make great strides through education and organization and cultural influence, only to take the illogical leap of believing that politics and political influence, which usually means taking jobs within the bureaucracy, is the next rung on the ladder to success. This is like trying to fight a fire with matches and gasoline ..

.. it is far more likely that the state will convert the libertarian than for the libertarian to convert the state.

We've all seen this a thousand times. It rarely takes more than a few months for a libertarian intellectual headed for the Beltway to "mature" and realize that his or her old ideals were rather childish and insufficiently real world ..

The Rothbardian approach to a pro-freedom strategy comes down to the following four affirmations:

• the victory of liberty is the highest political end;
• the proper groundwork for this goal is a moral passion for justice;
• the end should be pursued by the speediest and most efficacious possible means; and
• the means taken must never contradict the goal — "whether by advocating gradualism, by employing or advocating any aggression against liberty, by advocating planned programs, by failing to seize any opportunities to reduce State power, or by ever increasing it in any area."

Are there politicians who do some good? Certainly, and the name Ron Paul is the first that comes to mind. But the good he does is not as a legislator as such but as an educator with a prominent platform from which to speak. Every no vote is a lesson to the multitudes. We need more Ron Pauls. But Ron is the first to say that, more importantly, we need more professors, business owners, fathers and mothers, religious leaders, and entrepreneurs. The party of liberty loves commerce and culture, not the state. Commerce and culture is our home and our launching ground for social reform and revolution.